News:
July 17, 2020
Ahead of the Second Extraordinary Session of the Community Parliament via zoom from July 20 to 25, 2020, Bawku Central lawmaker and a representative of Ghana has said this issue of Nigeria closing its borders would be raised.
According to him lawmakers in the Community Parliament would continue to call on Nigeria to open its borders.
Before the official closure of borders within the sub-region because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigeria took a decision to close its border because of smuggling of rice into their country and the issue came up strongly in the fourth Parliament.
Mr. Mahama Ayariga in an interview noted that the border closure by Nigeria is bad. It has been spoken about severally and Nigeria has defended its stand of smuggling activities hurting its economy.
He further noted that countries within the sub-region have same problem like Nigeria but have not resorted to closure of their borders and pointed out that Nigeria should respect the protocols, since there are other ways of dealing with smuggling of products across the borders.
“I do not think border closure is the best way in solving this problem, given the leadership of Nigeria the precedent is not helpful Nigeria should open its borders to allow movement of goods, for now all countries have closed their borders and restricted the movement of persons because of the pandemic”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com